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A Comparative Look at the Core Beliefs of Jesus and Mr. Trump
Written by: Joe Morris Doss

At the Threshold is not in the business of judging the claims of people to be a Christian, and when someone running for office says they are a believer we take them at their word. However, we do accept a responsibility to place before our readers the clearly stated beliefs of a candidate for President of the United States so that they can be compared to the core and unchallenged Christian beliefs.

Forgiveness:

Jesus offers us forgiveness for our sins, “For,” as St. Paul proclaimed: “all have sinned and fallen short….”

Donald Trump said last year that he has never asked God for forgiveness. When questioned by CNN’s Jake Tapper, Trump said ”I am good. I don’t do a lot of things that are bad.” Then, when challenged by conservative commentator Cal Thomas, Trump said, “I hope I don’t have to ask for much forgiveness,” and immediately turned to his real and personal concern about that issue: “I think I will be doing very well during the election with evangelicals and with Christians.”

The Cross:

Jesus, who was cursed, humiliated, and crucified by the powerful said, “…my strength is made perfect in weakness;” “Blessed are the meek…blessed are the poor in spirit.” St. Paul said, “…the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God…we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block…and foolishness…(to others).”

As President, Trump would function under the rubric: “Might Makes Right.” He has declared – often – that what counts is power, and that the way “the score” is kept in this society is “money.” Trump’s “gospel” is success, and precisely in the terms of what Paul names as the “world’s wisdom,” which is revealed in the cross as “foolishness.” In his book, any soldier who lets him or herself get captured, even if that person’s behavior proves heroic, is “a loser.” His confusion about strength and weakness extends to the church. Speaking to a gathering of pastors, he chided them, “You don’t use your power.” (“You’re…powerful. Because you have men and women, you probably have something like 75, 80 percent of the country believing. But you don’t you your power.”) What Trump admires is not meekness, or any sort of impoverishment, but only strength, worldly success, and power. (Raise your hand if you can imagine him embracing “spiritual poverty,” or grasping even a tiny bit what this strong and lasting Christian tradition means.)

The Truth:

Jesus: The truth will set you free.

Donald Trump uses falsehoods that he feels free to contradict with other falsehoods. For Donald Trump there is no “truth,” and no “facts.” As conservative commentator Michael Gerson put it, “It is not surprising that Trump inhabits his own factual universe in which truth is determined by usefulness and lies become credible through repetition.” Gerson listed some examples by use of statements he made and then flatly denied during the first debate: “When confronted with his claim that global warming was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, Trump replied, ‘I did not [say it].’ He did. When Trump’s claim that he could not release his tax returns because of an IRS audit was exposed as false, he still insisted on it. When charged with saying he could personally negotiate down the national debt, he said this was ‘wrong.’ The charge was right. When Trump’s transparently deceptive claim to be an early opponent of the Iraq War was debunked, he doubled down in a babbling defense, citing Sean Hannity as he ultimate arbiter.” In that debate Trump again repeated that which finally drove the NY Times to use the word “lie”: the claim that Clinton aides started the question of our first black President’s American birth (in 2008).

Enemies:

Jesus: love them; pray for them.

Trump: Demonize them. Dehumanize them. The person who disagrees with Mr. Trump, stands up to him, or oppose him, will be declared worthless, stripped of dignity, and made the object of derision. Each human being is, in his view, either “a winner” or “a loser,” and there is no more awful thing in his book than to be “a loser.” This attitude is central to his campaign, it is central to how he works (as those of us who found ourselves having to work with him almost always discovered), and it seems to be central to his belief system.

Discipleship:

Jesus: Followers are to be “the salt of the earth,” “…do justly, and to love kindness and mercy, and to humble yourself and walk humbly with your God.” Christians are to defend human dignity, welcome the stranger in our midst, stand for justice, offer the blessing and dispense the grace of God, behave as agents of reconciliation where there is brokenness and division.

Trump: ‘nuf said, I would think. Surely so, if attention is being paid at all to his campaign of “walling-off” and “rejecting” and “condemning” and “dividing” and, and, and…

Conclusion: Whether or not Mr. Trump is a Christian, the worldview he proclaims and represents is absolutely incompatible with the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.

Powers and Principalities

Written by: Joe Morris Doss

Americans feel that we, as individual citizens, lack agency – a sense that we have too little say in what is going on and that we are relatively helpless to do anything about what bothers or concerns us. At the Threshold is offering a series that is intended to examine the causes of that frustration.

Perhaps there has been no time since the medieval era in which people are more given to believe in “powers and principalities.” This is a biblical term, but we modern folk are not likely to use it in reference to angels, demons, and things that go bump in the night. Nevertheless the powers and principalities that are “out there” today are as feared and admired with a sense of awe, as circumvented by manipulative enchantments and charms, and as worshipped as objects of faith, hope, and love, as in any age of yore. These powers and principalities seem as invisible, as ineffable, and as uncontrollable as any otherworldly creatures that ever may have been presumed to come into the human realm. It seems impossible to get a handle on them, and yet it feels that they run our lives far more than decisions that are made, either by ourselves or by human beings we can hold accountable. Here is the point for our purposes: People, institutions, and whole populations, feel robed of agency by what is experienced as “powers and principalities.”

We should start with the biblical use of the term. William Stringfellow, a 20th century attorney and lay theologian offers a concise but clear summary of the classic Christian understanding: “…that dominion which human beings receive from God over the rest of creation…is lost to them in the fall and, as it were, reversed, so that now the principalities exercise dominion over human beings and claim in their own names and for themselves idolatrous worship from human beings. People do not create the principalities nor do they control them; on the contrary, people exist in this world in bondage to the principalities. No one escapes enduring the claims for allegiance and service of the principalities.” (Essential Writings, Orbis Books, Modern Spiritual Masters Series)

If that doesn’t sound like modern life, let us examine his point in terms of our more familiar experiences. Do we not share a feeling that there are certain forces and dynamics over which we have no dominion even while they are working to determine what is to come? Bright and good willed people can be found throwing up their hands and saying that it doesn’t matter who gets elected to office, that events are going to take over anyway. There is the historical determinism of influential thinkers like Karl Marx, who promised us that forces of history are leading to foregone conclusions for human society. Darwin’s theory of evolution, still mysterious and misunderstood by most of the masses, has taught us that certain processes of mutation and selection are the driving forces for forms of life, including human life, that are fashioned in a struggle out of which the fittest survive – and that evolution is still, and will always be, at work. Freud, Jung, and Adler helped us see how “powers and principalities” work from within “the mind” and will never be fully within a person’s self-control. Scientist like Einstein demonstrated the truth that everything is relative; quantum mechanics has forced recognition that “common sense” observation, like the long standing axiom that “a thing cannot be in the different place at the same time,” has to yield to the reality that we can rely on no more than probabilities, and mathematically trained metaphysicians like Whitehead have informed us that there really is not even such a thing as a “thing,” since all that exists is in a process of constant change, and everything is relational instead of “individual” or strictly particular.

How much these theories have reached home to create a sense of what are the “powers and principalities” for our era can be seen in very practical terms when we consider institutions. No wonder we have become so frustrated with institutions, be they great corporations, governmental agencies, ecclesiastical organizations, nations, unions, universities – you name it. Institutions are all about their own survival. They are not about us, or anything of value beyond themselves. Finally, everything else is secondary to the preservation and glorification of the institution, and anyone having some relationship or connection to it must commit herself or himself to the cause of the institution – which, again, always comes down to its survival. As the song goes, the worker simply “…gives their soul to the company store.” As far as the institution is concerned, anyone and everything can be sacrificed in that great cause. The rationale for the institution can be couched in terms of the good it can do and often does, and everyone within it or called to serve it by participation, perhaps simply by being a customer, can be assured that the institution is good for them in important ways. But finally it is dehumanizing because the way it actually functions is not for us, or even about us; its life and its mission is all too much for the cause of the institution, in and of itself.

Ideologies can, and are likely to, be principalities. We may take the prevailing American myth of a holy nation, religiously “justified” and called to empire. Where there is such profound and sustained confusion over a nation’s character and mission genuine religion will know it as blasphemy and idolatry.

Deep-seated social realities over which we have little dominion, like racism, can be one of the powers and principalities. Racism is not simply a personal and social problem, but a problem with the Gospel.

Such “powers that be” are active characters in the drama of history and in each of our personal lives. We can try to deny them, or acknowledge them, or resist them, or – and this not only is the easiest but the normative path – yield to them and play along as though they give us purpose and a station in the universe.

But if you are a Christian, you have discovered good news to set you free to work in partnership with God for the good of the created order and its completion the age Jesus introduced and is to come. You have the model of Jesus, who withstood the powers of his day, not only identified in terms of an occupation by the Roman Empire, but in all that had been formed and turned loose to make for a future that did not become the kingdom in which God’s will is “done on earth as in heaven.” You have the example of the early church which, with all of its human flaws, understood and set forth a pattern of resistance to the “powers and principalities” they had to face – understanding, for example, (and it cost many of them their lives) that to proclaim, “Jesus is Lord,” meant that Caesar was not.

To be sure, your faith is not a claim that the “powers and principalities” no longer have dominion over you, but that with faith and understanding you can enjoy awareness and the larger picture of your personal role and value in the process of history. You can belong in the universe, even one corrupted and corrupting. You can have confidence that God will take your contribution and transform it into the divine creativity. You can have faith in the strong evidence within the created order that the greatest power and principality, in heaven and on earth as it were, is the phenomenal universal force of an unlimited lover.

What you and I need and yearn for is the supporting power of the community of faithful we term “church.”

Ah, that is why At the Threshold calls for reform. It is a call for the church to become what it claims to be: the community of those given the gift of discernment regarding the negative forces of the “powers and principalities” of our time, and the faith that we have been set free.

It is politically incorrect to say so, but yes, racism is still the biggest problem in the United States and racism is the dominant political issue in the Presidential and Congressional campaigns of today. That is because racism did not end with the Civil Rights Movement’s successes, and because, gulp – gulp, each of us who is white suffers racism – personal and systemic.

I think Americans deny this most sincerely. They deny it because they believe that racism is not something real, and inside us, unless we choose it and feel it and intentionally act on it. A standard has been set that approaches that of WWII Nazis or the White Supremism of the KKK, and most of us know we are free of those levels of prejudice and racism. It is necessary to challenge the idea that there are few Americans who actually experience that level of racism, but let’s assume that we are talking about white Americans like you and me – not others at whom we may be willing to point fingers.

Let’s begin with the fact that racism is an inherent part of our makeup, whether it is culturally induced or part of our “wiring.” One of the shocking discoveries that came of World War II psychological studies, the first time in history that the discipline of psychology was used to gather in-depth evidence about soldiers at war, not only those with problems but “G.I. Joe.” The evidence established that human beings have a much greater “built-in” inhibition against killing than had been conjectured. But beyond that the evidence concluded that it was harder for an individual to kill someone like themselves than to kill those who were different. The most important similarity and difference was defined in the most obvious terms of race. Soldiers in Europe, on both sides, found it far more difficult to put the sight of their gun on a fellow Caucasian and pull the trigger than did soldiers in other theaters of war (on both sides), as in the fighting between Japanese and Americans.

The second reality to face is the reality of racism that is systemic and culturally induced. This too, is inescapable for participants in our society. One of the most important spiritual, emotional, intellectual breakthroughs in my life was my realization and self-confession about my own racism – and the insight that, while this would be the fight of my life, the fight for my soul, I would never completely be free of racism. Am I suffering the sins of our fathers, as the biblical saying goes? Well, so are you; be honest with yourself.

In watching this summer’s Olympics did you, like me, find yourself noting how many of the American athletes were of color? Did you, like me, find yourself quietly “cheering” for the success of an athlete, only to recognize, painfully, that it might just be because that was the white one? Does that happen to you, like me, when watching the NBA – or other public events and gatherings? Have you found yourself, as I have, listening to a crime report on the news, looking to discover that the suspect is white, and having to admit to yourself that you had already pictured someone of color? Do you still identify more easily with a white person that you don’t know than strangers who are black, or Hispanic or Asian?

My racism is a given. My own personal experiences, observations, pastoral and counseling expertise, and studies all come together to conclude that yours is too. Perhaps especially this is true if you, like me, were raised in the South during a time when racism was a given, indeed when it was a virtue instead of a fault, when the very air you breathed was charged with the reality of white supremacy. But, in fact, I believe that this is so for all Americans of my generation, even where there were few people of color.

I long ago predicted (for what little that is worth) that our country was going to go a little crazy when we got to the point where we could not longer feel that we are fundamentally a freed English colony – one that allows non-Western-Europeans to enter but with the expectation that they will assimilate, that is, became like us. I believe that is what we are experiencing a sort of socially-emotional breakdown as the reality sinks in: white people are no longer the majority, the standard makeup, the defining norm. What I didn’t anticipate is globalization. Given our reaction to both radical adjustments, it becomes somewhat understandable that the threat of where someone like a Trump would take us has become a reality.

I marvel, find it hard to believe, and pray in gratitude that my children do not suffer the same racism. But they are American and so I don’t know how they can escape it even if to a much lesser degree. Seeing them and their friends gives me great hope for America’s future. I am thankful beyond saying that America is proving solid enough to deal with the White nativist nationalist strong man threat.

Nevertheless, if we have to face honestly why Americans feel a lack of agency today, it is necessary to focus on the racism that remains our biggest challenge. This must begin with an admission on the part of each White American. We are racists and so we must get over denials and do something about it – in our hearts, yes, but even there the first step must be in confronting the racism in our society.

Americans feel that we, as individual citizens, lack agency – a sense that we have too little say in what is going on and that we are relatively helpless to do anything about what bothers or concerns us. At the Threshold is offering a series that is intended to examine the causes of that frustration.

Increasing numbers of Americans sense a lack of agency because of the two-party system. Many people seem to feel that this is a limitation on their choices, discounts their individuality, and in various ways “hems” them in. This is a fundamental misunderstanding. (Whatever happened to high school civics classes?) The American system of democracy does not cost individuals any less control or influence. The misunderstanding can, however, lead to an actual lack of agency when a citizen refuses the opportunity to be actively engaged in one of the two parties and participate fully in the political process.

As the song of the West declares it, ‘don’t fence me in,’ is an American theme, Americans are famously independent, offended by being corralled into groupings, and resistant to restricted options. They like the right of voting for anyone they choose, and they like to make up their own mind without having others, or a process, narrow the choices. The very term “Independent” carries a preferential connotation and they like the basic idea of “being my own person.” Increasingly, people are registered as Independents. But what are the realities that come of deciding to withdraw from the two-party system? Actually, the more independent or removed from party politics the citizen, the less effect is that citizen’s vote or general impact on decision-making.

The American system of democracy is considered a Presidential system, not a Parliamentary system. It is dependent upon having a two-party system. If the two-party system is not working properly, the democracy is not working properly. If a citizen steps outside of the two-party system she or he will be stepping outside of the democratic system except as a spoiler or for the purpose of making a “statement.” One can recall very well the undercutting effect the candidacy of a third party had in helping to elect Bill Clinton*, and then the liberal third party candidacy that took enough votes away from Al Gore in Florida to allow the Supreme Court to declare the election of George W. Bush.

The only exception to this reality has been those rare but important moments in history when a newly formed party has been capable of replacing one of the two parties within the existing system. In such a case, the new party has replaced the defunct party; it did not join the other two to become a multi-party system. If Americans are not satisfied with the limited choices presented within the two-party system it will become necessary to change the constitution radically enough to establish a parliamentary system.

When the United States formed its democracy, the founding fathers had to invent the wheel. The model to which they had reference was monarchy. They did not want a king and they were going to make sure about limiting the power of their government’s leader, as well as making sure of checks and balances on all officials, bodies, and even branches of government. But it was assumed that governance was centered on a leader, which they limited to terms of office as a presider, or “President.” Very quickly, certain new insights, practices, and institutions became revealed as necessary. For example, it rather soon became apparent that the judicial branch had to be empowered to determine if the legislative decisions were constitutional.

One of the American democratic institutions that almost immediately appeared and became institutionalized, even though not considered, or even thought of, during the Constitutionals Convention, was the political party. Just as quickly as they appeared it was as two rival parties. The system seemed to emerge “naturally” out of differences defined by the personalities, different proclivities, and disagreements among the founding fathers.

Meanwhile, this more radical form of democracy begun in American soon began to spread among the community of nation-states that had been ruled by kings and lords. These rulers and ruling classes had been having their power checked (especially financing of policies, programs, wars, etc.) in the development of a Parliamentary system, in many cases for over a period of centuries. Because Parliaments and the systems to constitute and run them were already established it was only necessary to adjust to that system rather than adopt the new American Presidential system.

The earliest parliaments had gradually become the fundamental agent of government instead of a monarch. Centered not in a presiding executive, but on a primary legislative leader, this variation of democracy became the prevailing model for most developing democracies. Votes in national elections are not cast directly for a leader, but for the local legislator to serve in Parliament. This becomes, in effect a vote for the leader of the party to which the legislator voted for belongs. Without going into further complexities, this direct system of voting for a legislator and indirect system of voting for the leader of government opens options to chose from and the number of parties that participate meaningfully in government.

Fortunately, to date the American system that is limited to two effective governing parties has worked well enough that it has been maintained despite the far greater popularity of the parliamentary multiparty system around the world. Perhaps Americans will “change our mind” if the gridlock recently experienced continues, with the majority of the legislature so often acting in majority opposition to the President and the executive branch. But until the whole system changes Americans have to realize that the limitations are real.

Message to America: it is romantically unrealistic to suppose that voting for a third party candidate is going to have any effect in the pending election other than to undercut one of the candidates nominated by the two parties, or to make a statement of some sort of protest.

*”…most analysts conclude that his (Ross Perot’s) presence (Perot won 18.9% of the popular vote) drew support away from incumbent Republican President George H.W. Bush (who won 37.5%) and helped swing the election to Democratic Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas (43%).” (Wikipedia)